Landing Page vs. Home Page - Where Should You Send Your Traffic?

Intro

As you market your brand, you don’t just want people to visit your website, but also get interested in your brand and probably convert to customers, right?

Also, you need to send those target audiences to the right pages of your website where they will get to know more about what you offer and learn the value of your offers to solve their pain points hence increasing the conversion rates.

Many marketers don’t know the right pages to send their traffic as they market their business to prospects. This article will give insights on where you should send your traffic between your home page and your website landing pages and give some examples.

What is a Home Page?

The homepage is the first-page target customers arrive at when they type the URL of a website. It’s the page showing prospects what the business is all about and how it can solve their challenges. For example, when you type the URL of our website, here is the home page that you arrive at.

Source: Ranktracker

From the homepage, the prospects can visit other website pages from the links within the content of the homepage. For example, since our tool is about SEO and ranking when a customer visits the page and wants to know more about the keyword, they can click through the link to the landing page about the keyword finder.

Source: Ranktracker

What is a Landing Page?

This is a single page within the website that prospects click through to get detailed information about a specific tool or feature within the website. When marketing your brand you direct prospects to your landing pages where they can learn more about a specific feature of your tool or products and give them an actionable CTA to take action and convert.

Successful landing pages explore specific products, services, or features that help customers learn more about your business and encourage them to take certain actions.

You can also create landing pages to collect target customer information so you can start nurturing them through the buyer journey and later convert them to customers. The offers you can give target customers include:

• Ebooks
• Case studies
• Customer testimonials
• Product demos
• White papers
• Registration to an event like a webinar
• Free trial

Landing Page vs Home Page. What’s The Difference?

The home page is general about the entire business and the landing page is specific about a particular item or services the business offers. The main aim of the homepage is to attract leads to the business where the marketing team can start building trust with the lead as they show them the services or the products they offer to solve pain points.

On the other hand, the landing pages go into detail about a specific feature of the product and explain to the prospects how the feature works and how they can use it to solve their pain points. Either way, it’s essential to ensure these pages work correctly and load quickly to maintain the attention of site visitors.

Why Send Traffic to The Home Page

• Let customers know what your business is all about. The home page gives detailed information to the visitor on what the business is all about. It tries to convince the prospects about what they offer and get them to use the services or products for their challenges. That’s why testimonials are a big part of the homepage.
• Show prospects the value you will offer them to solve challenges. When a prospect arrives on a website, they do so because they have challenges and are searching for the right product or service to help them. The homepage shows the prospects the different products or services they offer. It’s like a display place where prospects can get to know the offers the brand has that can solve their challenges. For example, our landing page shows target customers all these features and explains them in detail.

Source: Ranktracker

• To direct users to specific landing pages. Before prospects make a purchase, they need to trust the brand that their offers can solve the challenges they face. The homepage directs prospects to landing pages to help target customers learn more about a particular offer how it works and how they can use it to get the results they want.
• Attract prospects at the TOFU. Leads go through different stages of nurturing before they convert. The homepage serves best to attract leads who are at the top of the funnel stages in their search as they want to know more about the business.
• Target customers to get an impression of your brand. The homepage gives target customers the impression of the brand or its reputation in the market as it gains the customer's trust.

Why Send Traffic to a Landing Page

• To give prospects detailed info about specific products or services. When prospects visit a homepage, they just get the basic information about a certain tool or product they are interested in. Such information is not sufficient for the lead to make their final decision and make a purchase. They need detailed information and see firsthand how the product or the feature works to solve the challenges. Such detailed information is found on the different landing pages of a business website.
• Build trust with them through customer testimonials. Target customers trust brands other customers have used and see value in them. To convince prospects to make their final decision, landing pages serve best to add proof that the value they offer is amazing. They include customer testimonials to give the prospects proof that the offer they give is amazing and that other customers with similar challenges used the products and solved their challenges. Here is an example of such testimonials on our page.

Source: Ranktracker

• Give CTA for a specific offer or item. You don’t want target customers to visit your landing pages and then leave. You need them to take an action that can result in either sales direct or entering the nurturing process and later becoming customers. The landing page includes a specific CTA to guide the prospects on the action you want them to take.
• It’s simple and keeps visitors engaged. The target audience visits your website to search for help to their pains. Your landing pages help keep users engaged as they learn in detail the value you will offer them once they decide to use your business offers to solve their challenges. Research shows that 39% of the right element to use on the landing page to drive more engagement and conversion is video.

Source: Hubspot

• Has a high conversion chance. The conversion rate on the landing pages is high as leads get details they need to know about a brand offers concerning their pains. It gives prospects a reason why they need to choose the business to solve their pains. A great copy of the landing page, a compelling CTA, and great testimonials from past customers increase the conversion numbers for leads.
• Grow email subscriber list. Sometimes the users don’t make a purchase immediately, they need more convincing to understand the business better. You need to nurture the leads by giving them more information about the business products or offers. With the lead capture pages, brands can get target customer information and start nurturing them as they get to know more about them, and the needs they have, and deliver the right value to them.
• Better for target customers at the BOFU. Some customers are already convinced of the value of business offers and want to convert to customers. Some landing pages help lead in the botton-of-the-funnel and get them to make their final decision to convert and become customers.

Types of Landing Pages

• Lead capture page. This is the page that sales and marketing teams use to collect target customer information so they can build trust with them, nurture them, and get them to convert to customers. The information the sales team collects depends on the goals they want to achieve for their marketing. Here is an example of a lead capture page.

Source: Reply

• Click-through landing page. For this page, the sales teams give detailed information to users and show them the value of the business so they can click through to the conversion page and convert. For example, a SaaS click-through landing page gives users all the information they need about the features it offers and then provides a CTA to get the leads to sign up for the free trial of the software.
• Long-form sales page. Long-form sales landing page gives detailed information to the customers so they can know all they need to know about a brand. The page has a captivating headline and includes a video that gives the users more details about the business offers and the value they provide. The page contains info like FAQs where they answer every single question from prospects about the business. At the end or within the page as you provide details, include a captivating CTA to get the target audience to take action.
• Splash page. Before leads arrive at their destination, you can give them more information about a specific thing. It includes captivating and high-quality visuals to attract visitor attention and has a CTA to help users take action. For example, as prospects visit the page, you can show them an ad that can earn you some revenue if they choose to click through it. The ad can be a product or service you're promoting.
• Thank you landing page. It’s always good to be appreciative when someone does something for you. Brands do so by having a thank you landing page. When customers make a purchase or download an ebook or any other content, they are directed to a thank you landing page where they get appreciated for their actions.
• Event landing page. When you have an event for your company you can get the target audience to join and get engaged with it. The event can be a conference or a webinar your brand is hosting about a specific subject. The page gives details about the event, and the benefits of the event and provides details on how prospects can join the event. You also include a registration form for lead to register for the event. Here is an example of Neil Patel's upcoming webinar event landing page.

Source: NP Digital

Convinced Where You Should Send Your Traffic?

Getting prospects to your website is just the start of the nurturing process and getting them to nurture them to be customers. As you do your marketing, you need to know the right pages to send the traffic to easily build trust with the leads, and get them to trust you and your products or services.

It's important to have great home pages for your brand but having great landing pages with detailed information and proof is more essential. Get leads to trust you by engaging with your landing pages and driving more conversions that result in increased sales.